


parallel lives

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, POV Phil Coulson, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Season/Series 05, Vaginal Fingering, it ends up corny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 20:40:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: After a particularly nasty fight Coulson helps Daisy patch up.Written for #CousyWinter at johnsonandcoulson.comPrompts: "Coulson patches Daisy up after her stint as space gladiatress" + "Daisy may terrified of her power in this s5 timeline. perhaps classical hurt/comfort from Phil will help" + "mirror sex"





	parallel lives

The flaw in the system - between the victory’s celebrations (the “owners” getting drunk, distracted), the few minutes of unsupervised solitude left to the fighters, to get clean, shower, get some first aid, Daisy found a way (bribes, favor, and the sympathy of people in the same or worse situations than her, that particular way she has of inspiring others she is not completely aware of yet) to get to the lower floors and send messages to the team. As the champion, as her owner’s favorite, she is allowed more time on her own to clean herself up and rest after a fight, a luxury fuelled by the arrogance of the Kree, who see Daisy as dangerous but not dangerous in the way she actually is.

Coulson’s bunk (inherited, untouched as if waiting for its previous inhabitant, or merely betraying Coulson’s secret faith in the possibility of going home soon enough) as the meeting point.

This is not the first time he has to patch her up after a fight - to the point where he thinks he might welcome the habit, if it were to become a habit, if only because it’s then when he finds out what happened to her. Humans are not allowed to watch the fights, of course.

This might be the worst he’s seen her hurt so far.

Or at least it’s more showy than the other time - her mouth, her eyebrow, it takes Coulson a while to get the bleeding to stop (multitasking as he commits to heart Daisy’s new information, the possibility of a ship out of here, instructions for him and the others to make that possible) and soon he’s gone through half the medical supplies Tess procured for him.

“It looks worse than it hurts,” Daisy comments, and he takes it that his face must not have looked as neutral as he had hoped.

“I doubt it,” he replies.

She silently agrees, or at least she doesn’t contest the point.

“I just can’t get over the fact that I’m a gladiator now,” she comments instead, trying to distract Coulson (and herself) from the fact that she’s still in pain.

“Not that weird to me,” he comments. “I grew up in the 70s. Pam Grier and Margaret Markov. In _The Arena_ , 1974. Gladiatresses were kind of a thing.”

“Pam Grier, uh? I’m in good company then- ouch.”

“Sorry.” Coulson handles her elbow, turning her arm to see if that pain means something more serious than a sprain, but it doesn’t seem that way.

He moves to the little cuts on her neck, hopefully too shallow to leave a scar. But it makes him wonder what kind of powers her adversary had. He doesn’t ask, distracted by the little futuristic device on Daisy’s neck, the one that keeps her from using her powers. Small and ordinary looking, Coulson draws his fingers over it, in awe that there is such a thing, such an evil thing.

He thinks it’s an aberration, this device. Like leaving Daisy disabled, like cutting off one of her limbs. 

“They had fun with that today,” Daisy explains. Something grim in her voice, too grim for Coulson, who closes his eyes for a moment, trying to shut the images forming under his eyelids, but finding they come easier in the dark. “They didn’t want me to have too much of an advantage, so whenever I had the upper hand they’d take my powers away.”

The wording. It’s a device, she could have said they switch her powers off. But for Daisy it’s a loss. No, a theft.

There is something sinister in the calculated way in which the Kree let Daisy get hurt all over, but not to badly. They are precise with the merchandising.

“Maybe after this is all over we can convince them to give us the blueprints for this thing,” she adds. “It’s handy.”

Coulson shakes his head. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It might end up saving a lot of lives.”

“It wouldn’t.”

“I’m, after all, the Destroyer of Worlds.”

She says it with intended irony but Coulson knows she believes every word of it.

He’s been here before. The unfairness of Daisy of all people, knowing so many of these moments in her short life, makes something bitter go up his throat. And the way she keeps it all bottled up, hidden, close to her heart. But Coulson has been to enough of these moments to wince at the idea of others, those she spent alone, or in inadequate company. Not that he feels very adequate most of the time, but whenever these moments happen and he’s there Coulson is always glad he’s there. A sort of a grim privilege. He knows he never lives up to it, but if he ever lessened a shred of pain in Daisy’s heart… then, well, maybe his is a life well lived after all. This one life at least.

He tries. He’s trying now.

“That sounds like a mistranslation of something,” he tells Daisy. “Are we sure is not _Quake, Savior of Worlds_.”

The goal is to offer some comfort.

Whatever Daisy took from it is different to all the other times this has happened, because she twists free of his arms so she can move, and she leans forward and presses a blood-metallic kiss to Coulson’s mouth.

She draws back immediately and for a moment Coulson is convinced she is going to say she made a mistake, or go on as if nothing happened, and though he knows that would be for the better the idea burns his throat with disappointment.

“Shit,” she mutters, almost inaudible. Then louder. “That felt good.”

She grabs his head, fingers holding onto his hair viciously, and brings him back to her, closing her mouth over his sharp breath. Now the blood is not just a faint taste, it fills him. He’s been tending to that cut on Daisy’s lip and now it’s splitting again under his tongue. He wonders if what he’s doing is okay. It slips out of his control, soon. Soon he’s not longer carefully perched on the edge of his bunk, he’s climbing, pressing his body against Daisy’s wounded body. She doesn’t seem to mind the wounded part. She has him in a grip, tighter than he would think Daisy would ever use, like she can’t allow him to get away.

Kissing her back Coulson feels a brief moment of guilt wondering if he ever thought about this before (maybe he only did, most damningly, at first, when Daisy was a stranger to him, a smart, righteous, fascinating stranger, a puzzle he couldn’t solve), but the idea of “before” is almost impossible to contemplate in this place, in this _now_.

Daisy’s fingernails dig into his scalp and he realizes she’s not so much stopping him from getting away as trying to dilate the time she can spend in here, she’s the one she doesn’t want to get away, trying to delay the moment where she has to go back to her clean, pitiless prison.

He has no idea what it’s like for Daisy out there, up there in the higher floors - not just the fighting and the training, not even having to watch as people barter over the price of her existence. Being around Kree all the day. Coulson can’t imagine what that must feel like. The Kree who are, ultimately, responsible for Daisy’s and her people’s existence, and for the pitfalls of it. And who discarded them and now consider them a mistake, or at most an amusement.

Daisy alone or surrounded by people in the same precarious situation as her, surrounded by people Daisy no doubt already takes responsibility for.

Maybe it’s arrogant of him but Coulson knows how little respite Daisy gets and he wants her to walk out of his room (this borrowed, decrepit, dirty room) with something good she can hold on to when she’s up there.

“Let me,” he announces, slipping his hands under her top and undoing the laces on her pants.

“There’s no time…” Daisy complains, pressing her mouth to the side of his head, like the realization is so painful.

“This won’t take a moment,” Coulson tells her, growling, working his hand under her pants and underwear.

He’d like to be gentler but he knows that’s a selfish impulse, _he_ would want it gentler, not Daisy, not right now. She knows he can handle her with care, it’s all he’s done since he’s known her. That’s the worst thing he could do right now - with the nickname “Destroyer of Worlds” constantly inside her head, she probably wants someone to handle her closely, and without fear.

Again, _arrogant_ , but he’d like to make Daisy whimper, bring her to a place where her body is not just the latest weapon up for grabs. The first part he manages to get with two fingers in.

It’s a mess - she’s leaving little dots of fresh blood on the bed and her throat exposed for Coulson to kiss.

He disentangled himself from her and drops to his knees, next to the bed, the physical strain of having spent the morning bending and picking up heavy objects taking his toll, but Coulson pushing past it, pulling Daisy’s clothes and shoes out of the way in almost one single, clean gesture. She angles her body to the edge of the bed, letting Coulson lift her legs over his shoulders. He notices a bruise on one of them he hadn’t seen it - of course he hadn’t - and wonders if she got it in this fight or the one before, and again his frustration about not being able to be up there _for her_ conveniently masking more complicated feelings about having radically and irrevocably transformed the dynamic between them.

Coulson rubs his unshaven chin across the inside of Daisy’s thigh, rising that sound out of her again. He honors his promise of being quick, taking her clit in his mouth while he pushes two, three fingers inside her cunt. It’s probably not so much personal (though Coulson has never been insecure about his technique, or at least he didn’t use to be) as how wired and on edge and in need of release Daisy was.

She doubles over when she comes, once he lets her legs drop to his sides, her hair pouring over the back of Coulson’s hair, her arms resting on top of his shoulders. He stands up, holding her and gently placing her back against the wall of the bunk.

“Come here,” Daisy orders, voice raw, hands flying to Coulson’s belt.

“I thought you said there wasn’t time,” he points out - as much as he would want her to stay here and do this to her over and over (and better and slowler and gentler and again) he doesn’t want her to get into trouble with the Kree or draw attention to the fact that their party is larger than they believe.

“Fuck time,” Daisy says, uncharacteristically, focused on the task at hand (pun intended, he thinks). She pulls down his trousers just enough, and his cock is hard, just enough. It’s almost too easy - just slipping inside her, too easy knowing that the other knows enough (as a SHIELD agent following certain codes and procedures, and as two people who live under the same roof) to skip awkward conversations about safety.

Almost too easy, the way in which they settle, without talking, on a rhythm. Surprisingly easy considering how long it’s been for him, and who he is with, which should make this anything but easy. It’s almost like this is a parallel existence, where they have never been SHIELD agent and boss, subordinate and mentor, family, where they’ve never been anything but this, bodies in a filthy room offering and accepting comfort.

“You have a mirror,” Daisy says, in the middle of it and her voice reminds Coulson, no, that’s not all they are.

“What?” he asks.

“Here, you have a mirror, I can see myself.”

Coulson turns his head, and it’s true, he can see himself moving into Daisy, inside Daisy. Suddenly he remembers what she said the first time she saw the room - “whoever lived here before you had your same taste in stuff” she had said, looking at the salvaged objects.

“I’ve never seen myself having sex,” Daisy says, her glance over Coulson’s shoulder, her tone slightly amused, as if she didn’t come from almost being beaten to death in an intergalactic gladiator fight between powered non-humans.

Watching as well, Coulson thought what he might find in the mirror would disgust him: some old, balding man, looking dirty next to Daisy. But he sees nothing of the sort, but he rather looks on with some curiosity, seeing his own body move gently, his hips rolling, seeing something simpler: himself loving Daisy.

“Never?” he asks, finding her confession unlikely. In this day and very technological age.

“Once I made a video with Miles,” she says, dropping her hands to Coulson’s ass, to guide his rhythm. “But it was my 21st birthday, so I got extra drunk on being able to legally get drunk,” she snorts, her body shaking around Coulson. “When I remembered about it I was to embarrassed. I deleted the video.”

Coulson thinks-

“I don’t even remember my 21st birthday,” he confesses, breathy, not stopping his thrusts. He is a bit bitter about it.

Daisy frowns.

“Is that what your little jab about having grown up in the 70s was about?” she asks. “Because we’re _in the future_ , and I might have destroyed the Earth so-”

“You didn’t.”

“Were you talking about this?”

He shakes his head. It’s weird to be talking like this while having sex - but he guesses it helps with the honesty.

“I wasn’t thinking about this at all,” he tells Daisy.

She nods and runs her hands up along his back and to his shoulders, pulling him into a kiss. The angle is awkward, this humble bunk all wrong for what they are doing, they have too many clothes on. It still works. The desperate edge, the messiness of the situation is beginning to seep out them, and it becomes something quieter right before Coulson comes and it’s all over. It’s convenient because they really don’t have time - but he regrets it’s already finished.

When he’s calmed down and slipped out of her he finds Daisy watching his face very intently.

“This is not a _what happens in the future stays in the future_ kind of deal, right?”

He shakes his head. “Of course not.”

“Just checking,” Daisy says, pressing her mouth against Coulson’s forehead and leaving it there for a moment, as if she is trying to draw either comfort or energy from the touch, before getting up and going back to her prison.

But get up and go back she has to.

He helps her to her feet, helps her dress, checking her wounds along the way, retouching the mouth and eyebrow a bit. That was supposed to be his task today, patching her up. He’s not stupid enough or in denial enough to think that what they did here today is just an extension of that, even without Daisy’s request for a (subtle, maybe still ambiguous, but real) definition.

Perhaps the context necessitated the excuse, but what’s underneath of his drive to comfort Daisy is much more selfish than that - and thank God, because Daisy deserves much more than selflessness or pity.

“I’m sorry you have to go back alone,” he tells her, as Daisy finishes fixing her clothes. “I’m sorry I can’t be there with you.”

She looks at him for a moment and then she does the most unexpected thing of them all: she hugs him. The shock is that it feels more intimate and dangerous than anything else, more than shoving his tongue between Daisy’s legs. Now it’s the time to be careful, he thinks, feeling Daisy’s breathing against his chest, her arms holding him tight but in a different way as when she held him against her kiss. He snakes his right hand up her back, threading his fingers through her hair oh so sentimentally in a time or place with little room for such things. But they are not hardened people, Coulson concludes, they are soft and hopeful.

“You will be up with me,” Daisy tells him. The hug goes on and it’s no longer possible to hold his breath so Coulson breathes, their bodies meeting in a strangely charged way, more charged than if they hadn’t just fucked. “You’re always with him.”

Coulson smiles, gently holding her head in his hand. Rocking them a bit, a memory of other hugs, or perhaps the memory of the hugs they should have shared and didn’t, or the memory of all the parallel universe where it didn’t take them so long to figure this out, where Daisy didn’t have to get hurt like this for the hug to happen.

It’s almost comforting, imagining himself out of this reality, with the certainty (how could it be otherwise? years - call it fate - have taught him she’s impossible to extricate Daisy from his life anymore than from his heart) that however things turned out in that other universe he’d there with her.

It’s comforting, coming back from all the endless parallel lives, to find Daisy in his arms.


End file.
